Insurgents kill father, two sons in south Russia

MOSCOW, Aug 31 (Reuters) Insurgents in Russia's mainly Muslim Ingushetia region killed three members of an ethnic Russian family, officials said today, the second such killing in two months.

Moscow has despatched 2,500 extra troops to Ingushetia, which neighbours Chechnya, in response to a surge in insurgent attacks that included the killing in July of an ethnic russian teacher and two of her children.

The latest attack was on the home of Vera Draganchuk, also an ethnic Russian schoolteacher, yesterday night. She escaped by jumping out of a window, but the insurgents killed her husband and two adult sons, police said.

''One line of inquiry is that this was intended to destabilise the situation in the republic and heighten tension,'' Ingushetia's prosecutor Yuri Tulygin told Vesti-24 television station.

''We have some possible suspects ... and are working to track them down.'' Militant Islamists have been waging a low-level campaign against Moscow's rule in Ingushetia but the violence has escalated in the past few months.

Russian media quoted a spokeswoman for prosecutors in Ingushetia as saying yesterday's attack may have been to avenge the death of an Ingush man shot by security forces earlier in the day during a search for militants.

Reuters GL RN1411